Innate
-existing in, belonging to, or determined by factors present in an individual from birth
-belonging to the essential nature of something
-originating in or derived from the mind or the constitution of the intellect rather than from experience
Samson
A scolding, small punctured wound reaches along the seam of my right glove. I take a moment to inspect it. It is barely visible, a fine ripping in dark leather and the smallest of threads in spindling grey.
I barely move in my seat, take another inspecting look.
This is the second pair of gloves since last month.
It is true what I told my wife. Decapitation is messy. Fights can be too. Messy, desperate hands trying to grip me. I prefer some distance between me and the looser surrendering senseless. At least enough to not get too dirty when they bleed.
They always bleed.
And I always win.
I barely move in my seat, take another inspecting look. It's a nice chair. It was easy to take. Hilarious to believe my wife wants to desperately sit in it and never came close. Even if the chirping bird irritates my eardrums in an unpleasant way. And surely enough, it reeks of the mutts, their shedded fur is everywhere. The metal inlaid with the sigil of their house touches the back of my head when I lean back. Not enough to dishevel my hair.
It is not the chair I originally wanted to be seated in, but comfortable enough until the next step. The study is empty. The big desk abandoned. I have turned the chair to the window, to get a better view over the spectacle downstairs. Through a gap, the voices ring up in spiraling commands.
Black and green gathered in a pile of pale, angry faces, the Viper's stand to attention in the courtyard.
I don't even attempt to show an ounce of interest for any of the words that are said now. It's another speech to rally their morale after the current mishaps.
The words get boring and tedious if you watch them from the sideline, from too far away. The words I want are the words to say. Words that slash in commands and unmistaken success.
These, now, are just words that collide with my ears but do not even reach my mind. At most irritating as the bird. Because I read the truth in their heads when I want to. And the truth is that all these self-proclaimed snakes have no teeth. Most of them have the decisive or usefulness of a wet towel.
But the day Vipers ever stop comparing themselves to their animalistic counterparts will be the day the sun doesn't shine.
With my father in law as their speaker at least, I can take what I want and when I want it. That is the least recompensation for the work I have done in the last months. It takes a while to infiltrate and squeeze out all the information you need to stage some coups and deceive people. It would be easier to simply take everything, but subtlety is in question. Or was in question. Before last night.
Did I murder and rip secrets out of countless heads the last weeks? And did I watch cameras and keep up in contact?
Didn't I clean up good enough?
Get rid of that incompetent Viper. Keep my wife on her feet to rustle in the bushes right before Iral, make them nervous, make them focus on her. Work with that vessel of her son to keep her under control. Assuming positions and keeping the way clean and undisturbed to let the little red rats in on the night of the parting ball.
Hunt and interrogate people after their unfortunate escape.
And last night, of course, first leaving evidence strewn over the whole palace in a compromising manner. Then making the secretary write that confessional suicide note. Letting him off the hook easy with a bullet. And of course, helping to seize and decapitate Blonos.
I could write a list and it still wouldn't cover the deeds with all the inconveniences and nights prowling. All the blood, and pain- and all the begging.
It had its ups and downs, I will admit.
I am still waiting for some more appropriate compensation.
Until then I have to endure in this menagerie of stupidity and dramatic entanglements.
I lean back in my seat by the window.
Then I force my eyes to see his face, the scared, wrinkled lines, the ducked back posture, because despite the fact he speaks, and the fact that all he can think about is joy to finally have people listen after a decade, he is still mostly useless. He is still just someone to guide and command.
He just pretends to have a spine. It is as broken as the one of his daughter just a mere hour ago.
Speaking about her broken bones, stupidity and hideous pretentiousness...
My eyes wander slightly over the courtyard held by fences, with the machinery of vehicles slowly grazing and stopping beside it.
Daliah Viper isn't too far from her father. They decided to give her a new gun, the fools. A rifle that looks comically large in her small fingers. A black uniform she owes to me just as the place she stands in now. She could have been more than that. If she hadn't struggled so long.
When I force myself to extend and creep into the cracks between her thoughts, her spine arches.
If you hadn't seen her fly down concrete ranks and smash on the ground, you'd not think it has been less than an hour. She didn't fall very graceful. It was more like a sudden splash- a slump of bones and meat breaking on the ground.
If her jaw had stayed broken, at least there'd been no words, but now it is both the never-ending circle of loathing and self-pity in her brain, mixing with the words she yells.
I don't get what I deserve- I don't want to feel something- I am so close- Snakes this, predators that, spiders this-
I blink once. Then I discard the mild exhaustion her circling brain causes.
One thing Vipers do right in their exercised disciplines and maxime: You got to keep your leashes tight. Just the right amount between pain and the simple indication of a lie your subordinate tells themselves. If they struggle and fight, all the better.
Animals struggle and fight before they bite necks and rips hearts out, after all.
I catch that thought before it leads further.
Daliah's prosaic monologues have left an unwelcome mark after too many hours of listening to it. All the Viper's and their animal talk are treading on my small rest of patience still left.
I cross my legs and watch them.
Her scarred lip quivers when she looks over to my window. Unsurprisingly she chose to keep it to spite me.
What she doesn't know could almost be amusing if it wasn't inducing something vexing in my system. Because the very truth is that every bit of damage and every scratch, bruise and scar helps to make her more alluring. Her intactness is not important. She isn't valuated by something pure. She was spoiled and rotten the day I saw her first, and she wasn't unblemished the day she had to marry that fool Macanthos.
Her head tilts just like the stinking dogs she loves so much, black hair tightly pulled back from the collar that hides her neck. I remember how it feels under my fingertips, squeezing slowly, but with too little force to end it. Just enough to hurt, to leave a grey bruise. My fingers twitch.
She never learns, not even after proposing a deal and finally surrendering.
She vexes me to the point strangling her seems like a blessing. Every second is a mix of squeezing the life out of her, hitting her so hard I could break her apart from the inside, to finally make her understand.
I smooth over the leather of the glove again when she snarls at me.
When the Viper's have all retreated, gathered, departed, I slowly stand up. Leave the chair where I put it. I'll sit in it again in the morning, to have a better view.
The thoughts are a black storm. They whirl around the top of Archeon. I catch them and devour them if I can. Let them float by if I can't dare yet to crack into the head belonging to it.
Soaring metallic jets pour down the clouds one moment.
The lights around me fluctuate like the thoughts in the air. A flickering, bright sensation burning down my eyes and making my throat dry. Leaving something behind I want to keep. Something satisfying. Something valuable.
Then the city is left behind by most. Not careless enough, but still abandoned. Ripe for the taking, long before tonight, and it shows in the rest of discarded sentinels left behind when I walk through the hallways beyond the walls from Whitefire. Ripe for the taking and already conquered. Already taken. Already inhabited by someone that understands that this world is weak, and degenerated. And that the degeneration is tedious, a tumor made of emotional distress. But understanding also that you can easily use the distress if you're not attached to it.
Force is the only language they all speak. Violence is a bullet in a brain and a knife in a gut, and everyone can understand the meaning behind it.
No one dares to stop me walking until I reach a door guarded by a group of guards and sentinels.
She looks pale. Not the angry Viper pale though. Not the same pity pale.
I sat by the window in the Viper chair. Now I stand by the window with Elara and watch the jets soar down silently. But not less hungry.